Thankfully, the last-minute preparations for the meeting kept Kat-and Jeff-occupied enough that she didn’t have to speak to him alone before they left for the rendezvous.
As soon as they arrived at the park, Jeff and her teammates melted away into the sultry stillness at the bottom of the sheltered valley. She was left to cool her jets in the car and listen to the others murmur over the radio as they covertly searched the park and moved into position to observe the meeting. The Medusas found no sign of the black-clad men from last night’s robbery.
And then the waiting began.
Typically, when Kat waited before a kill, she dropped into a state of relaxation where time flowed over her and around her without touching her. But tonight she was unable to achieve that fugue state of waking sleep. She fought back jitters over and over. Under normal circumstances, if she were this agitated, she’d step away from the shot and let someone else take it. But tonight there was no one else. The Ghost would speak to her and her alone.
Finally, eleven-forty-five flashed on her watch. She got out of the car gratefully and made her way into the deserted park. Jeff had decided she’d move into place early to give the team of assailants from the last robbery plenty of time to reveal themselves.
She went to the bench and sat down. Acutely aware of the eyes of her team upon her, she schooled herself to utter stillness. After all, she had a reputation to maintain. The Medusas often called her the ice cube when she was waiting to make a kill. She could sit for two or three days with barely a twitch. She could surely sit on this bench for ten minutes without fidgeting.
But it turned out to be surprisingly hard to do. She was used to being the hunter, not the hunted. She knew all too well how easy a target she was, motionless and out in plain sight like this. Even the most inexperienced of snipers could pick her off like a tin duck in a cheap shooting gallery.
Must think about something else.
Jeff was out there. He’d never let anyone take a potshot at the future mother of his children-good Lord, had she just thought that? Since when had she bought in to his crazy notion of love at first bolt?
Good thing the Medusas had shown up when they had, or she might have been in serious danger of doing something entirely inappropriate in the middle of a mission. Except why didn’t she feel relief at that thought? Why was vague disappointment at her team’s inconvenient timing rattling around in her gut instead?
Jeff would be looking at her right now. He’d assigned the Medusas to scan the forest while he watched the immediate vicinity around her. Was he undressing her with his eyes? Imagining what they could’ve done together last night had they not had their argument? Whatever was on his mind, the heat of his gaze was palpable at a distance of a hundred yards or more. Or maybe that heat was coming from her own risqué thoughts. There was no question in her mind that he’d be a skilled lover. He was too comfortable with women, too physical a being, too at home in his own skin to be anything else.
Midnight came and went.
And still she sat. Alone.
She’d expected this, however. The Ghost would approach carefully, reconnoiter the area. Make sure she hadn’t set a trap for him. Come in, already, Mr. Ghost. My friends won’t hurt you. Not if I have anything to say about it.
The bench she sat on faced the main walking path that wound through the gully. Behind her fell a curtain of hanging vines and ferns from a stone arch that had once supported the ceiling of an ancient cave. Beyond the vines, the eroded remains of several massive stalagmites marked what used to be the cave floor. Between them, a faint path led the way back to an old entrance to Harrison’s Cave-an extensive complex of caves stretching away beneath her feet. An iron security gate blocked the cave entrance to protect the caves from the local kids and vice versa.
“Don’t turn around.”
The whispered voice was quiet, barely reaching her ears. Male. Strongly French accented.
“Are you alone?” he asked.
“Of course not. My partner wouldn’t hear of me coming out here by myself. He’s hiding in the trees somewhere.”
Two things happened simultaneously. Jeff swore sharply over the radio into her earbuds as he realized she was speaking aloud-off radio, and a quiet laugh floated out of the darkness behind her.
“Such refreshing ’onesty. I like you.”
“Why did you want to speak with me?”
“Yes, let us go directly to the point. The danger this night is much greater than your friend.”
She asked quickly, “What are you talking about?”
“As you may know, I ’ave been busy ’ere in Barbados.”
She answered dryly, “So I’ve heard.”
Another chuckle. “When a fisherman casts ’is net, ’e hopes to catch one kind of fish. But often, ’e catches another as well. Like the fisherman, I took a painting, but by accident, I took something else as well. Something you need to see. It was affixed to the back of a canvas.”
“What is it?”
“In a moment. First, you must tell me true. Do you work for the American government?”
“I do.”
“Perfect. If you will come over to the gate behind you, I will give it to you.”
Startled, she stood up. The movement caused a flurry of chatter in her earpiece as the Medusas readied themselves for her to go mobile. She picked her way with exaggerated caution toward the gate, both because it was dark and hard to see in the shadow of the thick curtain of vines, and also to give her teammates a few extra moments to reposition themselves.
Isabella was the first to announce that she’d acquired a heat signature inside the opening to Harrison’s Cave.
Kat murmured low, “Step back from the opening a little. My colleague has you in his sights.” She might be willing to save the Ghost’s life tonight, but she wasn’t foolish enough to give away to him the true degree of backup she had out here.
“Merci.” The French voice took on a faint echo as he spoke from farther inside the cave.
“Do you want me to come in there?” she asked as she approached the heavily padlocked gate.
“It is not necessary. Please, if you will reach your hand through the bars…”
She did as the Ghost directed.
Something smooth and flat that felt like cardboard was laid in the palm of her hand. “What is this?”
“This-’ow you say-self-explanatory.”
“A warning, my friend. This time we have met in honorable truce. But I cannot extend that to you after tonight. My boss has ordered me to use whatever force is necessary to stop you. And next time, I will be bound by that order.”
“Understood. In return, I ’ave a warning for you as well. If anyone finds out that I ’ave given this disk to you, you will find yourself in immediate and extreme danger. Be very careful.”
“Danger from whom?” she asked, startled.
“You spared my life-for we both know you could ’ave killed me if you wished-and now I ’ave paid you back. Equal warnings ’ave we traded as well. I count us even.”
She drew her hand back through the gate, tilting the cardboard sleeve in her hand to pass it through the metal bars. It held a CD of some kind.
Jeff announced sharply, “H.O.T. Watch says we’ve got heat signatures incoming. Four hostiles. Moving fast. Armed.”
Kat started. She’d momentarily forgotten that the folks in the Bat Cave were monitoring tonight’s meeting via surveillance satellite. She murmured, “The men who chased you from the scene of last night’s theft are coming. Time to go, my friend.”
“What men?” The Ghost’s question was sharp. Alarmed.
He didn’t know? She thought fast. Should she warn him or not? Maybe they were some law enforcement agency that the H.O.T. Watch wasn’t aware of working on the case. If she gave the thief any more information, she could be compromising a criminal investigation. Except she’d already revealed the men’s existence. And her gut instinct said to tell the Ghost about the men.
Jeff spoke in her ear. “Move out, Kat. Take cover.”
She spoke fast. “Last night. Six men. Armed. Wearing black. White van. They staked out the estate. While I was chasing you, they were chasing both of us.”
“What ’appened to them?”
“Their van crashed. We took measures not to be followed home. Do they know who you are?”
Jeff’s voice was more urgent. “Get out of there, Kat! They’re almost here. We don’t need a firefight out here.”
The Ghost murmured, “Merci. I am in your debt once more.”
Kat felt his swift departure into the bowels of the cave as a faint whiff of air against her skin. She took a quick look around and dove behind the curtain of hanging vines. Lying on a bed of moss, she announced quietly over her throat mike, “He’s gone.”
Jeff snorted and muttered, “And they’re here. Everyone pull back. Quietly. No confrontation.”
Kat reached out with her senses, hearing, smelling, even tasting the verdant night around her. If she crawled on this tender moss, it would rip, leaving obvious black gashes to mark her passage. Moving slowly, she drew her pistol and held it over her head with both hands in a firing position. Then she began to roll, gradually easing away from the cave opening. With each revolution, her gaze roved all around, seeking any movement, any shadow that was not of the night and of the forest.
Without warning, a tall figure clothed in black rose up about thirty feet beyond her head. She froze, lying on her back, gazing awkwardly up and back at him as he swung up a semiautomatic carbine in a smooth motion. In an instant, she identified the weapon. A Yugoslavian SKS rifle with a bayonet mount. Not a weapon Jeff or the Medusas used. And the guy obviously had a target in sight. The weapon settled against his shoulder and his right forearm tensed. He was firing!
Without hesitating, she squeezed off two shots overhead while lying on her back. The first shot caught him under the right ear. The second, she’d adjusted downward to compensate for his beginning to collapse, and it hit him square in the temple. A kill shot.
The guy dropped like a stone as crashing sounds erupted from all directions. Men shouted back and forth. They yelled in a language she didn’t know, but she didn’t need to understand. They knew they had a man down, that there was a shooter out here, and they were determined to find and kill her.
This scenario, she knew. The kill was always easy. The escape afterward was hell. She rolled fast across the remaining moss, then rose into a crouch behind a tree trunk. She glanced up. A towering black pine. Not ideal for climbing…the branches were too thin to support much weight, and closely spaced enough to make scaling the trunk a pain in the rear. But she didn’t have much choice.
She often made use of three dimensions when egressing a close-range kill. Most people only thought in two dimensions, so thinking vertically gave her a big edge. Not to mention, Hidoshi had trained her to climb like a monkey.
Not worrying about noise as the dead man’s colleagues crashed through the gully like a herd of bull elephants, she jumped for the nearest branch. The soft wood bent deeply beneath her weight, but held.
Up she went, distributing her weight as best as she could among multiple branches as she climbed the rough ladder of limbs quickly. A dark shadow moved below, and she froze, one arm around the trunk, the branch she stood on slowly flexing beneath her weight. As the angle of the limb grew steeper and steeper, she prayed silently.
Hold a few more seconds. Don’t crack.
Thankfully, the sap-filled wood remained silent, and the shadow moved on. She switched quickly to another branch and wrapped both arms around the trunk, supporting most of her weight that way.
“Where the hell are you?” Jeff murmured.
“I went vertical. One hostile just passed beneath me,” she breathed back.
Misty murmured, “I have one moving past me, away from the park entrance.”
Isabella spoke next. “I have one examining the downed man.”
Frustratingly, no one reported sighting the last man. Kat was startled when Jeff breathed, “Ops, say location of hostiles.”
A new voice came up on their frequency. “Two hostiles, immobile, sixty feet east of Cobra. One moving northwest, one-hundred-ten feet north of Sidewinder. One hostile moving west-by-southwest, approximately fifty feet from Python’s location.”
Kat mapped the locations in her head. Nobody was about to stumble across her hiding spot.
The voice continued. “A new hostile moving between Adder and Mamba’s positions. Field-of-fire conflict between Adder and Mamba. Maverick, another tango is heading toward you. Should pass twenty to twenty-five feet in front of you, moving left to right. If you have cover and hold position, you should be clear.”
Six men were out here? Those last two might have successfully ambushed the Medusas had the H.O.T. Watch combat observers not warned them. Handy, having an infrared picture from God’s-eye view like this.
Jennifer Blackfoot came up on frequency. “Visual shows one more hostile back in the parking lot. He appears to be tampering with your vehicle.”
Kat’s jaw dropped. Okay, so the H.O.T. Watch folks were more than handy. They were lifesavers.
“Copy,” Jeff murmured. “I have my man in sight.”
The woods and the radios went silent as the hostiles calmed down from their initial panic and went into hard-core hunting mode, creeping stealthily through the lush tropical foliage.
It was a deadly game of cat and mouse. For the most part, Kat, Jeff and the Medusas held their positions, hunkered down to wait out the hostiles as the H.O.T. Watch observers occasionally murmured a position update.
And then Jennifer announced, “Problem, folks. We just got a momentary visual on one of your hostiles. We enhanced the image, and he appears to be wearing night-vision goggles. We cannot confirm, but have to assume they’re infrared.”
Kat’s stomach dropped. That meant they also had to assume that their trackers could see them now, and would shoot them on sight. The rules of this game had just changed completely.
Jeff breathed into the radio. “Request permission to go full offensive.”